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Ultracold gases

Shock cooling a universe

Nature Physics volume 9, pages 605–606 (2013)Cite this article

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A Correction to this article was published on 02 December 2013

This article has been updated

Rapid cooling across a phase transition leaves behind defects; from domain walls in magnets to cosmic strings. The Kibble–Zurek mechanism that describes this formation of defects is seen at work in the spontaneous creation of solitons in an atomic Bose–Einstein condensate.

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Figure 1: Spontaneous soliton formation on shock-cooling a BEC.

Change history

  • 07 November 2013

    In the News & Views 'Ultracold gases: Shock cooling a universe' (Nature Physics 9, 605–606; 2013) by Martin W. Zwierlein the first sentence of the seventh paragraph should have read 'A topological defect can only form where at least three regions of different <Ψ> meet on a line, and only if the angle of <Ψ> changes by a non-zero multiple of 2π as one goes around that line — the marble makes a non-zero number of round trips around the Mexican hat'. This error was unfortunately introduced during the editorial process. Corrected after print 7 November 2013.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Martin W. Zwierlein is at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the MIT-Harvard Center for Ultracold Atoms and the Research Laboratory of Electronics, MIT, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139, USA,

    Martin W. Zwierlein

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  1. Martin W. Zwierlein
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Correspondence to Martin W. Zwierlein.

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Zwierlein, M. Shock cooling a universe. Nature Phys 9, 605–606 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1038/nphys2773

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